


Only the Strong

by maypop



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maypop/pseuds/maypop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Over the winter that followed the end of my marriage, I forced compassion on myself, and found it more awful than rage..." A shameless attempt to bite Jacqueline Carey's style, and send Erdene off on an adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/gifts).



Over the winter that followed the end of my marriage, I forced compassion on myself, and found it more awful than rage.

It was not my first choice. I am my father's daughter, and a fury that went on farther than the sky was my birthright. As the days grew short my anger grew as comfortable and well worn as my saddle, and I could have lived in both: but the nights are long, in our lands, and we are a working people, even our khan's daughters. A mare in foal cannot wait on your feelings, and I learned to put them aside, to wait for me in the long nights.

In the nights I strove with them--the hot anger that climbed my throat, the indignity and shame and doubt of being cast aside, the other feelings I didn't quite have words for, that made my breasts heavy and aching and my thighs rub together. And, late in the nights when the days had been spent stuck in the ger while the snow howled, and there was little exertion to make me tired, thoughts of honor and duty and obligation and the fact that I had, in the end, given him up freely.

It was a very long winter, pacing in tired circles in my own head, forcing my anger down with memories of Bao's pain, and god-touched jade witch eyes. A long, long winter, with an ache inside.

And then, in spring, the shaman came for me.

I would come to learn that the slightest treating with other worlds is enough to ruin any manners you may have once possessed. I woke up early, and she was there. This is probably why shamanism seems to run in families: a normal family would have been tempted to tell Sarangerel to get off her horse and walk to winter camp.

I rubbed my eyes and stared at her in the grey dawn light, and weighed my memories of her as a muddy-footed babe playing fierce warriors with me, and the year the spirit took her, and she fell down.

The babe won--I groped beside my pallet for something soft to throw at her head when she spoke.

"You tempt me to wage war on Heaven," Sarangerel said, and my spirit chilled within me. I let the scarf slip out of my fingers. She wore her grandmother's apron of mirrors, breaking the early sunlight into hard edges across her face. Foolishly, I thought of my marriage, as I often did then.

"Bao didn't..."

"For seasons these were just mirrors," Sarangerel said. "When my mother wasn't looking, I could use them to fix my hair. So I studied, and looked into myself, and fashioned the drums, and milked the cattle, and one day something other than my own face looked back."

I sat up, uneasy, and tugged my blanket tighter on my shoulders. "These are not things for me to hear, Sarangerel."

She scrubbed her face with her hands. "I've been up all night," she said. "I'm sorry, Erdene."

"What's going on?"

"I don't see my grandchildren anymore," Sarangerel said. "I see my niece, but I don't see her daughter. When I throw the bones, I see an end coming, and I see you in it." She surged to her feet, and out the door flap, before I could say another word.

I stared at the wall of my ger as it grew lighter, and wondered what had just happened. Then I threw myself out of the blankets and struggled into my clothes and went after her.

I strode through the camp in a fine froth, still twitching my clothes straight around me. This was not enough of a change from a regular day that anyone paid me any attention.

"What," I said, when I found her, as I knew I would, with the cattle. I planted my feet on the other side of the cow she was milking and stared at the top of her head. "What are you talking about, what do you mean, you cannot just leave me with that."

She popped up over the other side for a moment. The morning light was bringing colors back to the world, and I met her stare for stare. Her face was square, and stubborn enough to face down spirits from beyond the sky, with the endless black eyes of all her family, and an awkward scar like lumps in thread stretching away from her mouth. She was still a bit shorter than me, though the clanking odds and ends of shaman's paraphernalia added height in the memory.

Her face was drawn tight, but her voice was airy. "I am rather the chosen voice of the spirit world," Sarangerel said. "Rude."

"I'll kick over your bucket," I said. "I'll rub mud in your face just like I used to." I struck a pose like a wrestler and slapped my upper arm muscle, and watched the lines around her mouth ease a little. "It might not just be mud, either," I added, and she squawked.

"I'm trying to tell you," she sputtered. "I am trying to warn you--"

I threw my hands up. I was good at putting my feelings in a bag now, so I said easily, like I didn't remember the mirrorlight on her face, "Maybe you can't have children. Have you thought of that?"

"No, because I am very stupid," Sarangerel said, and dropped back down to finish the milking. "Kick over my bucket. When you die, your spirit will wander in the dark between worlds forever."

"Bet you won't."

"Bet your soul, Erdene?"

I clasped my hands behind my back and walked around to her side to watch her finish. We are Tartars; there is work for everyone, and poor man and khan alike live under round roofs--and it is accordingly hard for anyone to be a distant and frightening beacon of otherwordly power, even when they technically are. "Sarangerel," I said. "Tell me what you see."

She didn't speak. I stepped closer, and tentatively reached for her shoulder, when we heard the commotion. I pulled my hand back quickly.

"Yah, Erdene!" someone was shouting. "Erdeneeeeee! We found another foreigner for you!"

"Can I bet his soul," I said, but when I turned, her face had gone hard again, so I threw my hands up and strode out. Four or five boys were clustered near the gers, shoving each other and laughing, and I opened my mouth--

\--and closed it, and opened it again. "He better be good looking," I shouted. "Jochi, if this one has cold hands too, you send him back and get me a new one!"

The other boys roared. Embarrassment fluttered in my chest, but in a way that didn't feel so much like bleeding. When I reached the group, the arm punch I gave Jochi was only a little harder than necessary.

"Well, go on," I said. "Who are they? Have they come to trade?"

"Not they," one volunteered. "Just one. And crazy. Not as pretty as me, either."

I waved my hand. "Let my father take care of him, then. I only want pretty foreigners," I said, and went back to help Sarangerel.

I stuck to her heels, after that, but Sarangerel refused to say anything more, on that day or the ones that followed.


	2. Chapter 2

The stranger stayed the spring, and I avoided him. I could make jokes, now, but I had still had my fill of foreigners.

In a camp, you eventually know everyone--and the foreigner fascinated everyone _else_ , and so, quite against my will, I eventually knew all there was to know about him. A halfbreed, though he didn't like to talk about it, and an outcast from his own (some sort of family power struggle, familiar enough), and a missionary. And that, he did like to talk about.

Our people had met proselytizers before, of course, and generally found foreign gods interesting enough, but not capable of keeping up with our lifestyle. Too many suffocating, smothering buildings that never let the air in, too much insistence on planting things, too many men who wanted to set themselves away and apart from us--we were children of the wide blue sky, and nothing smaller could contain us. So I heard, at length, from Sarangerel.

She was glad to have someone to talk to, that spring. Someone who was not frightened, and didn't stare at her scar; and for my part, I was glad of her sense of humor, which did not ever make mention of my past. Or my future--alone in my ger for life, or remarried to a man who pitied me.

But it was impossible to avoid someone forever, in the camp, and one clear morning I stumbled on him. He was on his knees, in the dirt, with a necklace, and someone who was certainly not his wife.

" _What,_ " I said sharply. "Saikhan! What is this?"

"Penance," the stranger answered. His tongue was clumsy on the word, but he met my eyes squarely, and I took in a breath. Not as pretty as Bao, no, and the sun had not been kind to his milky skin: but there was a sharpness to his bones that drew the eye.

I disliked him instantly. Pretty men had too much power they hadn't earned.

"Penance," I repeated, and perhaps there was something of last winter in my voice, for Saikhan hurriedly tucked her necklace away and scattered. The stranger remained on his knees, hands on his thighs. "Explain yourself."

It took him a moment, chewing on the words. "All people do... things that are not good, sometimes, yes? When I do, I--" he folded his hands together. I would come to learn that was prayer. "I say the prayers. One for each bead. Or more." He grinned. "It hurts my knees! A little pain for me, to make things right before God. And before--before others. So revenge, not necessary. They know I hurt. I know I did wrong."

Saikhan's sons had died in a blood feud. I rubbed my face. "Just don't--do it where people are walking," I said, and fled to Sarangerel's ger.

She made the tea for both of us, and I stared at the steam, not at her, not at the mirror apron that flashed colors that weren't anywhere to be reflected. You got used to it, eventually. "Did you know," I said. "About Saikhan?"

After a while, she nodded. "Her, yes," she said. "Jochi, too. And Chagha’an, and Altaan, and Ghazan, and Dorji. He talks well, for someone who can barely talk." She sighed. "His Yesu walked the land, and preached forgiveness without feud, he says. I do not hate him."

"Much."

"Much," she admitted.

"Is this the end you saw?" I said. "When you came bursting in on me? Is this it? Is this how they make us into Vralians, at last?"

Sarangerel's head jerked up. "No," she said sharply, alarmed. She made a flat gesture. "No, I--I'm so sorry, Erdene, I didn't mean to make you think that--No. Our people survive."

I relaxed.

"It is only the end of me," Sarangerel said.

I spilled my tea. She jumped up, cursing at me, pulling the soaked blanket away from her lap, but I ignored that. "What happens," I shouted at her. " _Enough_ of this, tell me--"

"I'll just have the other world come over for dinner, hey?" she shouted back. "I'll just do that! They'll answer all my questions in detail, I'm sure!"

I flopped back down and glared at her. She glared back. I broke first, and jerked the blanket out of her hands to spread by the fire.

"There will be others like me," she said to my back. "I think. This Yesu doesn't have everyone."

"But he gets us," I said to the fire. "Our clan. He gets us. Your niece--" She'd fallen ill, a week past, ill in a way no fire could warm or herbs could drive out. "She's the last shaman, isn't she? That's what you saw?"

"Yes." A rustling, then her hand on my shoulder. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes?"

"Did you love him?"

I sucked in air, and let it out carefully; and I would have thought I would struggle with the answer, but there was a winter's worth of answer for me already.

"I loved Bao, I think," I said, to the growing shadows of the ger where she lived alone, and the hand tight on my shoulder. "The way that my father loves honor, and my grandmother loved power, and some men love war. He was beautiful, and he was mine, and he was new and fascinating and sad, but I never... they never gave me time to love him. I never really knew him. Not really. Why are you asking this now?"

"You leave with Aleksei," she said, and the world was so twisted and confused around me it took a long time to remember that was the missionary's name.

I knocked her hand off me with a convulsive jerk.

"I thought maybe you would fall in love with him," Sarangerel said quickly. "I thought--" She held out her hands. "I did not know. I only know you leave."

"I could not ever," I said, and only knew the words for true as they came out of my mouth. "Love the one who drives you out." She blinked. There was no expression on her face. " Wait. He leaves?"

"With you at his side," Sarangeral said. "His guide to the other clans."

"I--"

She raised her voice. "You say you don't want to leave now, but the jokes won't stop, Erdene. Even if you remarry, they will never let you forget. Eventually you can't take it anymore, and you leave."

 _Yah, Erdene! We found another foreigner for you!_

"Leave with me," I said. "Sarangerel--" I stepped closer, and pried her hands loose where she hugged herself. "Leave with me. Help me. If Yesu is going to take our people, let them still be Tartars when he does."

She squeezed her eyes shut. I shook her. The sun was setting, and the light was at the wrong angle, but the mirror apron flashed anyway. After a long time, her hands curled around mine, and she nodded.

In my chest something sparked, and stretched, and drew itself across my heart like a scar like knotted thread. I squeezed her hands, and swallowed.

So we sat--I did not let go of her hands--we spoke of the future of our people, one disgraced khan's daughter, and the second-last shaman of my clan.

There would be plenty of time to finish falling in love with Sarangerel, in the years to come. The winter is long, in our land, and the sky is wide.

**Author's Note:**

> -Sooooo. Jacqueline Carey's Tartars seem to be Mongols, judging by the statement that the wall was built to keep them out, and I've drawn from Mongols writing this. Also in real life, the Mongols encountered Christianity much, much earlier than this, and it came up from Iran, not down from Russia: but if strict one to one historical accuracy with regard to religion is what you're looking for, I'm not sure how you enjoyed this canon in the first place. ;)  
> \--"It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness is expected only from the strong."


End file.
